


The Wooly Soldier

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Knitting, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2358854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve just wants to keep Bucky warm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wooly Soldier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelgazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/gifts), [aredblush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aredblush/gifts).



> Written for angelgazing, who was having a rough night, based on [**this art**](http://aredblush.tumblr.com/post/97468883782/the-winter-wooly-option-number-2-sounded-more) by aredblush.

Steve had learned to knit as a boy. It was a useful task for a sickly kid with deft hands, and much more interesting than darning socks or mending torn seams, which he'd also learned at a young age, and not just because his mother sometimes took in sewing to earn extra money. Bucky's ma and sisters had knitted dozens of pairs of socks for the war effort, and Steve had sometimes joined them, even as he'd chafed at being left behind when all the other guys from the neighborhood had shipped out.

Once he'd become Captain America, he'd put his needles away for good, though when they were marching through the snow, he appreciated the numerous pairs of socks that came his way from grateful women on the homefront. In the future, he didn't have to knit his own scarves or sweaters, or darn his socks, so he didn't. Modern clothes weren't made very well, but they also weren't that expensive, relatively speaking, so Steve mostly stopped feeling bad about the way his shirts tore or his jeans frayed, even though he hadn't owned them very long.

And then he got Bucky back. His recovery was a slow, painful process, even though Steve did everything he could to make it easier. He read books and articles about trauma and PTSD, he vetted therapists and talked Bucky through flashbacks and comforted him after nightmares with seemingly bottomless cups of cocoa and endless repeats of "Moonlight Serenade" on the record player. It didn't feel like enough, but there were some things even he couldn't fight, some things that Bucky was going to have to fight through for himself, no matter how much Steve wanted to step in, the way Bucky had always stepped in for him.

One thing he did notice, though, was how much Bucky hated the cold. Steve understood--he wasn't too fond of it himself anymore. In the first few months after the serum, he'd reveled in it; to him, the ability to stay outside in the cold when everyone else was huddled in their tents in their meager Army issue bedrolls was even more wondrous than the capacity to lift motorcycles over his head and climb a flight of stairs without wheezing (though he definitely liked not wheezing and not being ill six months out of the year). But even though he couldn't consciously remember the freezing (or drowning), he no longer enjoyed the cold or felt so impervious to it, and he often woke up shivering from nebulous nightmares about being buried in ice again (still).

Bucky's nightmares were full of more obviously terrifying things, or so Steve gathered from what little Bucky would say. But he also shivered himself awake, his hair and t-shirt damp with cold sweat and his jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. And Steve remembered that while he himself had only frozen to death once, it had happened to Bucky over and over again, and terror of the cryo tank seemed to be one of the few things that the chair hadn't erased. They'd wanted him terrified and docile, and frozen through to his heart.

Steve bought the heaviest comforters and softest blankets he could find, and made his bed with flannel sheets that warmed quickly to the skin, but Bucky couldn't spend his life in bed, and he couldn't wear a comforter out into the world. (Well, he could, Tony pointed out, but Bucky'd always been a little vain about his appearance, and he'd nixed the idea so quickly that Steve couldn't resist a tiny triumphant fist pump at how much of himself he'd finally gotten back.)

They both liked the soft, fleecy hoodies that were so popular with young people today, but they lacked something Steve couldn't quite put his finger on. It was only after he'd received a hand-knitted sweater from Doris Kaplinsky, one of the chorus girls he'd been on tour with so many years ago, that he figured out what to do. 

Knitting, it turned out, was more popular than ever, with entire websites and weekly meetings dedicated to it. There were stores that sold nothing but yarn, in colors and qualities he'd never dreamed of being able to find or afford back in the 30s, and books and patterns to help a beginner (or a rusty old-timer) out, as well.

The first thing Steve knitted for Bucky was a pair of socks. They were plain and black and a little lumpy in the toe area, but Bucky took to wearing them around the house all the time, often enough that Steve whipped out a few more pairs so he never had to be without while one pair was in the wash. He even experimented with making them non-slip (since the floors were wood), even though Bucky was one of the most surefooted people Steve knew. While he kept the sock patterns plain and simple, the designs he painted on the bottoms became more abstract and intricate, just to keep it from getting boring. (The next time he visited the pediatric ward at New York-Presbyterian, he brought a ton of socks and some puffy paint, so the kids could paint their own. The project was a hit with parents and internet knitters alike.)

His next project was a scarf, in a soft, buttery yellow wool that made Steve feel warm just looking at it. Bucky had given him a small smile and wrapped it around his neck the next time they went out, incongruous as it was over his gunmetal gray hoodie. 

He really wanted to try fingerless gloves, since Bucky preferred them, but he couldn't quite get the fingers right at first, so after some moderately vehement cursing and a lot of unraveling and reknitting, Bucky (and Natasha, Clint, and Sam) wound up the recipient of numerous pairs of arm warmers. Sam's had little wings painted on them, and Natasha had a wool facsimile of her widow's bites around the wrists that made her laugh out loud the first time she saw them. Clint's, of course, were purple.

Tony said Steve should open his own Etsy shop, but Steve didn't see the need to sell the things he made; he had more than enough money to live comfortably, and whenever there was a clothing drive at the VA or one of the neighborhood churches, he knitted his share of hats and socks for those in need. (Though he still hadn't gotten the hang of attaching pompoms to the hats. It was a failing he couldn't quite bring himself to regret.)

Everyone got used to seeing Steve with his needles and his bag of yarn, and it turned out that Bruce did needlepoint (it was surprisingly calming, he said) and Natasha made lace, so they'd gather once every couple of weeks in the big penthouse living room at Avengers Tower for what Tony called the Avengers Stitch and Bitch. Tony neither knitted nor sewed, but he'd discovered amigurumi on the internet, and suddenly every surface in the place was littered with tiny crocheted Avengers. Steve often took batches of them to the hospital, just to make space at the Tower.

Steve was almost finished with a bulky sweater for Bucky, who had picked out the softest navy blue yarn Steve had ever handled. He didn't get the neck quite right, and the left arm was slightly too short, but Bucky wore the sweater everywhere.

"It's like having your arms wrapped around me all the time," he murmured into the crook of Steve's neck one night as they cuddled up under the covers. "And if you tell anybody I said that, I'll deny it."

"Pfft," Steve said, a warmth that had nothing to do with wool or flannel spreading through him. He pressed a happy kiss to the crown of Bucky's head and smiled fondly. Everyone knew Bucky was a softy beneath that badass assassin exterior, but some things Steve liked to keep to himself.


End file.
